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Red Hat Magazine: From Source to Binary: The Inner Workings of GCC

"Computers are very complex and, at the same time, very dumb
objects. They need to be told in excruciating detail exactly what
to do. Even worse, they only understand sequences of bits (1s and
0s), so for instance, simple operations like adding two integer
numbers may require a sequence of about 48 bits on a modern Pentium
processor. Imagine what it would take to implement an Operating
System.

"Needless to say, we don't usually program computers using
strings of bits. Instead, we write all the instructions in a
language we can understand and then have it translated into the
appropriate sequence of 1s and 0s that the computer can understand.
The concept of translation in the computer world is pervasive.
Everything you tell the computer to do needs to go through a
translation process..."